#BookBlitz: You Are a Queen by Celia Anzalone Bowers @RABTBookTours #Giveaway

 

Nonfiction / Self-Improvement

Date Published: October 1, 2024

 

Celia Anzalone Bowers went from a drug addict hooked on methamphetamine and cocaine to a pageant queen, Love Waits for You podcast host, TEDx speaker, nationally ranked-triathlete, mother, committed spouse, published author, and a multi-million-dollar business entrepreneur.

After surviving a traumatic childhood accompanied with abandonment, sexual abuse, drug abuse, and physically and verbally abusive relationships, Celia overcame her trauma and all the ways she coped with it—overachieving, people-pleasing, and addictive behaviors—by transforming her pain into her power and healing herself—body, mind, and soul.

If someone would have told her twenty years ago that she would found a nonprofit that touches countless lives, continually be featured on local talk shows across Tennessee for inspiring others, write not one, but three books—much less, use her voice at all—she would have thought they had lost their mind.

She didn’t believe she could ever “come back.”

Two decades ago, Celia had no concept of what she was capable of—what anyone is capable of—because no one had shown her the way.

Trapped in her own darkness, Celia had to feel her way to the light.

Ultimately, Celia realized the healing had resided within her the entire time. She will show you so that you may see to believe for yourself—if she could turn her pain into power—anyone can.

No matter where you are in your healing journey, you will find hope and practical guidance in You Are a Queen: Transform Your Pain into Power.

Whether you are struggling with a break-up, some form of addiction, a lifetime of trauma, financial struggles, a loss of someone or something, or simply searching for a new way to live and to feel less “stuck,” this book will offer you strategies for not only some relief, but for your lasting healing.

#BookReview: Punished for Dreaming by Bettina L. Love

“I am an eighties baby who grew to hate school. I never fully understood why. Until now. Until Bettina Love unapologetically and painstakingly chronicled the last forty years of education ‘reform’ in this landmark book. I hated school because it warred on me. I hated school because I loved to dream.”
―Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How to be an Antiracist

In the tradition of Michelle Alexander, an unflinching reckoning with the impact of 40 years of racist public school policy on generations of Black lives

In Punished for Dreaming Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. Today, there is little national conversation about a structural overhaul of American schools; cosmetic changes, rooted in anti-Blackness, are now passed off as justice.

It is time to put a price tag on the miseducation of Black children. In this prequel to The New Jim Crow , Dr. Love serves up a blistering account of four decades of educational reform through the lens of the people who lived it. Punished for Dreaming lays bare the devastating effect on 25 Black Americans caught in the intersection of economic gain and racist ideology. Then, with input from leading U.S. economists , Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core.

#BookReview: The Last Huntress (Mirror Realm #1) by Lenore Borja

AMAZON

ABOUT THIS BOOK:

Alice Daniels has a problem. Her reflection keeps misbehaving when she looks in the mirror--and the longer she ignores it, the harder it tries to get her attention. On her eighteenth birthday, she learns why: she is a huntress, someone gifted with the power to enter mirrors and the magical world that exists beyond. But with this power comes immense responsibility, for in the Mirror Realm lurks an evil that has infected the human race for centuries: demons. It is up to her and her three huntress sisters--with the help of one handsome and overbearing protector--to hunt and banish this evil one demon at a time, thereby keeping the chaos in check. But when an ancient god pays Alice a visit that turns deadly, it is clear the Mirror Realm is more than it seems, and she soon finds herself in a race against time to save the life--and soul--of the one man the gods are determined to never let her have.

The Last Huntress is a story of redemption and sacrifice, the bonds of true sisterhood, and the impossible, sometimes frightening, things we'll do for love.

#BookTour: The Missing Girl & Jessa is Back by Stacia Moffett @RABTBookTours #Giveaway

Historical Fiction

Date Published: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Publisher: Peanut Butter Publishing

 

 

In rural Radford, Tennessee, in the 1950s, a white family is killed in an automobile accident.

Upon hearing the news of her parents’ and grandfather’s deaths, Jessa runs away with her dog, creating problems for her town, especially for the sheriff, her parents’ friends, and the Black community that falls under suspicion. Racial distrust shapes the town’s response to Jessa’s disappearance, and as the weeks stretch out, the weather poses increasing challenges for Jessa as she shelters in a hollow tree while attempting to provide for herself and her dog, Cassie. Help appears from an unexpected source as a family mystery is revealed.

The Missing Girl and the second book, Jessa Is Back, are placed right in the midst of “the good old days” and serve as a reminder of the unabashed nature and danger of white supremacy in the 1950s. These provide us an opportunity to examine the parallels in events unfolding today

#BookTour: Memories of Mk-Ultra by Bill Yarborough @RABTBookTours

 

Coming of Age / Psychological /Historical Thriller / Metaphysical

 

 

Memories of MK-ULTRA traces the development of three siblings from their early childhood—marred by harrowing mind control experiences in the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program—through their coming of age during the turbulent 60s and into their early adulthood in the 1980s. As the story develops, an incredible chain of events uncover the dark forces shaping their lives . . . until an unexpected source of light appears.

#BookReview: Immersion: A Linguist's Memoir by Linda Murphy Marshall

AMAZON

ABOUT THIS BOOK:

Fans of the self-discovering journeys in Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Andrew McCarthy’s The Longest Way Home will love diving into linguist Linda Murphy Marshall’s adventure-filled international journey as she overcomes her past to find her place in the world—all over the world.

Immersion is a memoir that takes the reader on a captivating emotional and physical journey through Linda Murphy Marshall’s from the longstanding, crippling impact of family members’ low expectations and abuse, to her discovery as a young adult that she possesses special skills in foreign languages.

Linda is taught from an early age that she has little of value to offer the world. But her love of and affinity for languages enables her to create a new life—to separate herself from her toxic environment and to build a successful, decades-long career as a professional multilinguist. It’s a rewarding vocation, but a challenging her assignments with the US federal government take her on some hair-raisingly dangerous journeys, some to countries with unstable governments and even active war zones. But these sometimes-harrowing experiences teach her how to open the “windows” around her, unearth her true self, and develop a healthy sense of self-worth—and ultimately, paradoxically, her work and travel so far from home allow her to come home to herself.